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Obama: Feds won't arrest marijuana users in Colorado, Washington

Gerald Thompson holds up a bag of marijuana on the steps of the state Capitol in Denver on Monday as he celebrates recreational use of the drug becoming legal in Colorado. (AAron Ontiveroz, The Denver Post)

President Barack Obama, in an interview aired Friday, said the federal government will not arrest individual marijuana users in states that have legalized the drug.

Obama's comments — excerpts from a longer interview with Barbara Walters that aired Friday on "Good Morning America" — square with what federal officials said this fall, as Colorado and Washington voters considered ultimately successful measures to legalize use and limited possession of marijuana.

Obama left unanswered, though, the larger question of whether the Justice Department will move to block portions of the laws in both states that allow for marijuana to be sold in specially regulated stores. That question looms over the laws, as legislators in both states begin to craft regulatory structures for a recreational marijuana industry.

"I wouldn't go that far," he said. "But what I think is that, at this point, (in) Washington and Colorado, you've seen the voters speak on this issue. And, as it is, the federal government has a lot to do when it comes to criminal prosecutions. It does not make sense from a prioritization point of view for us to focus on recreational drug users in a state that has already said that, under state law, that is legal."

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In further comments reported on ABC News' website, Obama said the new laws should prompt a larger discussion in Washington, D.C., about marijuana's legal status.

"This is a tough problem because Congress has not yet changed the law," Obama said. "I head up the executive branch; we're supposed to be carrying out laws. And so what we're going to need to have is a conversation about, How do you reconcile a federal law that still says marijuana is a federal offense and state laws that say that it's legal?"

Marijuana activists responded with caution to the president's comments.

In a commentary on The Huffington Post website, Ethan Nadelmann, the executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, said Obama's comments about not arresting individual marijuana users "is not news."

But, he said, Obama's willingness to engage marijuana as a policy topic is promising for supporters of changes to marijuana laws.

"What stands out here are the words about the 'need to have ... a conversation' and the fact that he is framing the conflict between federal and state law as a question to be resolved as opposed to one in which it is simply assumed that federal marijuana prohibition trumps all," Nadelmann writes.

Erik Altieri, a spokesman for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, took a wait-and-see approach.

"This is a great start and an encouraging sign that the federal government doesn't intend to ramp up its focus on individual users," Altieri wrote on the organization's website. "Though considering it is extremely rare for the federal government to handle possession cases ... and that this is the same stance he took on medical cannabis before raiding more dispensaries than his predecessor, his administration's broader policy will be the one to watch."

John Ingold: 303-954-1068, jingold@denverpost.com or twitter.com/john_ingold